If the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) really wants a reform and wants to clean the system, it should not keep corrupt persons who are docile to the system and persons who commit illegalities. Concrete actions should be taken against the prosecutors who commit abuses so as to give a clear signal to them and to society, said lawyers Veaceslav Țurcan and Maxim Belinschi, who noted that the impunity of prosecutors is now very topical and this is a problem as there are prosecutors who committed a number of illegalities, even offenses.
In a news conference at IPN, lawyer Maxim Belinschi said the case in which he and his colleague Veaceslav Țurcan were investigated is among the 38 allegedly political cases examined by the PGO. The prosecutor general back in winter said that legal solutions will be provided in this case. Even if legal solutions were announced and there is the acquittal sentence, the prosecutors didn’t withdraw the illegally filed appeal. Moreover, the prosecutors who investigated them continue to hold their posts and some of them were even promoted.
Maxim Belinschi also said that the intimidation continued by a new criminal case by which attempts were made to seize the legal assistance contracts. The ordinance to this effect was signed by an anticorruption prosecutor and was maintained by the former chief of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office. This was ultimately annulled by the judge of inquiry. As they saw that they cannot obtain much in Chisinau, they transferred the case to the Bălți Prosecutor’s Office, which issued a new decision to seize the legal assistance contracts. Later, the court rejected this request and the Appeals Court upheld the decision. “The question to the Prosecutor General’s Office is: Why aren’t the prosecutors who committed illegalities held accountable? We filed complaints back in 2016,” he noted.
Veaceslav Țurcan said that if a reform is really wanted, those who commit abuses should be held accountable. If the PGO cannot intervene in simple cases, what can be said about complex cases? Some of the 38 cases, especially those that have an economic connotation, have an end result that is different from that in the cases with a political connotation.
The two men’s lawyer Valeriu Pleșca said that even if the prosecutor general asserted that the charges against illegally investigated persons will be dropped, this wasn’t done. The two lawyers have been tried for four years. The impunity of judges remains a topical subject for the whole community of lawyers and for their clients. If the rights of a lawyer who is investigated illegally are not respected, he will not enjoy guarantees and will remain silent as will the citizen, but this is inadmissible in a state with the rule of law.
The news conference entitled “Impunity of prosecutors” forms part of the series of conferences held in the framework of IPN’s project “Injustice Revealed through Multimedia”. IPN Agency does not undertake to decide if the organizers of news conferences are right in the cases about which they will speak as this is the exclusive prerogative of justice, but the exaggeratedly long examination period of these cases, which is much longer than the law allows, can be considered an act of evident unfairness and injustice. IPN News Agency does not bear responsibility for the statements made public by the organizers of news conferences.
